At the zenith of the Oslo Peace Process, shortly after the 1993 handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Peres published a grand vision for the region, a book called The New Middle East. Even in the heady days of the 1990s (I was living in Jerusalem at the time), it was derided as naÃ¯ve. High-speed trains from Cairo to Tel Aviv to Beirut. International cooperation on technology, water, and natural resources. Though Peres had been a ruthless pragmatist for over 40 years, covertly developing Israelâs nuclear program and cutting arms deals across the world, he seemed hopelessly hopeful, deluded, utopian.